Editorial: Legalize pot? Maybe, but not via Prop. 19

Should California — should America — legalize marijuana? Not just for real or purported medicinal uses, but for anyone who wants to light a pipe to unwind after work or pass an afternoon fishing at the lake?

More and more, the reasonable answer to that question looks like "Yes."

Is Proposition 19 the right way to do it? We're not persuaded.

Let's take the first question first — because Proposition 19 has focused attention on an important public debate.

You don't have to be a marijuana user or even sympathetic to smokers to reconsider our laws in the light of recent years' news from the marijuana front.

On the one hand, law enforcement and illegal growers are fighting a war of attrition in our north state woods — one that, realistically, will never end as long as users are willing to pay for the product, legal or not.

On the other, we've seen the rocky but relatively civilized emergence of "cooperatives" in California cities, shops openly selling marijuana under the rubric of Proposition 215.

Not long ago, they'd have been considered drug dealers, their stores promptly shut down and their proprietors put on trial. Instead, now they pay property taxes, sponsor community events, and grouse about zoning codes and regulations like any Chamber of Commerce member.

Quite frankly, that's a lot less hazardous to the public than carving out clandestine plantations amid the manzanita and madrone, polluting creeks and setting booby traps for patrolling rangers.

Would legalization increase marijuana use? In the short run, no doubt. But taxes, sensible regulation, social stigma and blunt public health campaigns have done more to reduce tobacco use than the war on drugs seems to have accomplished with pot. The evidence that the status quo is working is scarce.

So what's wrong with taking a flier on Proposition 19? Unfortunately, lots.

For starters, the initiative system itself has plagued California with laws that bring unintended consequences all but impossible to rectify. Once the voters approve an initiative, it's extraordinarily difficult for the Legislature to modify a statute or fill in details — even when changes are sympathetic to the goals of the initiative.

Many laws attempting to put Proposition 215 (the 1996 measure allowing medical use of marijuana) into effect, for instance, have been challenged and found unconstitutional.

Legalizing pot would launch a journey into a radical social experiment; doing so via initiative would dramatically lessen the state's ability to make midcourse corrections.

And the details of Proposition 19 leave too many open questions. Its radically decentralized system of regulation would essentially leave it up to every city and county to write its own rules on taxes and commercial sales — quite the opposite of the reasonably effective state-run system of alcohol regulation, whose licensing system keeps a lid on problem bars and liquor stores that skirt the law.

Nor is it at all clear how the law would effect employers. Many are required to screen employees for drugs under federal law but would be barred from doing so under the terms of Proposition 19. Employers could punish workers only when marijuana impairs their work, but there are no guidelines whatsoever as to what that means. Could the state figure out such a system?

Yes, but that's the sort of detail that should be worked out first. Otherwise, the initiative sets businesses up for a decade of confusion and expensive litigation before the law is settled.

In principle, legalization might be the better way forward. But California needs to prepare for that trip, move cautiously and know where it's going. Proposition 19 is the wrong map.